paganchristian

[paganchristian]

Here is the pink and yellow thistle we saw at a park recently.  We also saw at another place, purple thistles that are some different kind, I think, very round seedheads and smaller flowers than the giant purple thistles I’ve seen more often.  Anyway, we gathered some of the seeds to try planting it in our garden because we have many painted lady butterflies and that is a host plant of theirs apparently, but there are plenty of thistles nearby and mallows, and other things they apparently eat.  I’m no expert, but that is what the website for the butterfly kits said they eat, and a few other things.  I just wanted to grow some in our own yard so maybe we can have local caterpillars we see every day.  My daughter has also found numerous four leaf clovers, now, and apparently they are abundant in our yard and she’s found a couple here and there at parks.  I guess they’re more common than they say or maybe most don’t look for them that often or both.  And she’s found a two leaf and a one-leaf clover.  The clovers end up put in different books to dry and it’s interesting seeing which books they are put in.  The one-leaf clover, found at a park, was put in a book about Waldorf education, The Heart of Teaching, it was called.  I always carry at least one book with me in nature, in case I feel able to read while we walk or sit and rest.  I really do think they are real one and two leaf clovers, as far as I can tell, that is, not eaten by bugs till there is only one or two leaves but that way inherently.  Because there are no leaf bud spots where the leaf would grow out of the bottom of the stem, as it looks when you pick off a leaf (we investigated to see).  Anyway, one leaf clover, maybe could represent oneness.  It could represent unity with God.  It could represent the Father?  It could represent faith?  If two leaves can represent hope (as in faith, hope and love, the second one usually named), then it got me thinking.  Because lately when she found that clover, I’d been thinking and experiencing different things that made me think of stuff that seemed fitting for that and then the book, too, seems, about teaching her about these topics, which was related to something I’d been thinking about at the time.  It seems random and perhaps.  But if it helps me then it works. 

Anyway, growing thistles, it makes me think, I’m on the path to gaining gifts no one wants or they think they want but they don’t really.  Because the real expression and action of those gifts is too taboo.  Too outside the norms, too rejected.  At least, often it is.  But it feels like my life is growing thick with thistles and I don’t mind.  I finally find that my answers are being found.  I meant to say that yesterday, but kept getting derailed where I would just say things that sounded a lot more vague and undefined, a lot more like I was probably more on the path to failure than any real answers.  Which is weird that it kept coming out that way.  And I think the reason it did was because there is part of me that just shies away from speaking about the answers I’m finding, even when I feel like I’m m mostly talking to my own mind, my own memory’s sake, to write in a blog that is mostly meant to be for me, so that I can remember and reflect on the journey that’s been before for me.  Anyway, in some way too it’s just that it really is just so very hard to call it answers, to call it solutions.  Maybe it really will end in defeat.  How long will the full unfolding be even if successes are met?  And if some successes are met, will it be far outweighed by the failures in most people’s eyes?  So much so that is’ hard for me to speak about successes, even in my own blog meant for me?  Yet even if it looks like failures overshadow successes to such a great degree I might feel that it’s not as it looks, not as my words and worlds can convey.  But still language is usually used to communicate with others and so much so it is that way, that even when i try to talk jut to myself I find my words and thoughts getting swept into the swirl of trying to be understandable to other people, and my thoughts get clipped away and quelled down and then they are gone, so when I really need to remember something important I have to be careful when I am trying to write it down because my mind has a way of shuffling hard to understand thoughts out of expression, thought, or memory.  If I want to stay conscious of what is going on for me for real, then I have to be careful about communicating and writing, even when I do it for my own sake nd I need to do it for my own sake, and even when others also need to hear the things I’ want to say, and I think they need to hear what I have to say.  These truths are often not appreciated, spoken or only half spoken and then contradicted, quickly, given la brief mention, praise and importance, but hypocritically denied and argued against more or overpowered by opposite attitudes, by the very same people. I want to be one voice in the many, even knowing that my own voice might become just a background indiscernible and unimportant voice, yet some things require one to speak even if you might not be heard, just in case you are.  So it’s all these things that make me speak but often I prefer silence, just like I was saying.  

And that silence in God and my own heart, my own mind, my inuitions, and subconscious, my heart and meditativeness, all that, in nature, in resting in being, in nonresistance and patience to wait for God’s answers, the taboo God, to trust, to hope, to believe that he might eventually answer me, t seek answers in new places than before,.. that’s the kind of silence I’ve been sinking in. 

God is giving me answers, he is helping me piece together the view of my reality, my problems, the problems with myself, my family, my friends, the world, my child, my homeschooling and ways that I raise and teach my child, and my health, and religion, and spirituality and other belief systems, alternative medicine (and mainstream conventional medicine as well), parenting theories and approaches, and the views of God that people generally have, and the approaches to God, and problems with the ideas and approaches and biases in the field of psychology, and problems then also with my own psychological problems that are blocking things from moving forward and falling into place, ...  and problems with my history, that of my family, my closest loved ones, society, so many people in the world, and throughout time, and religion, and ideas everywhere.  

And yet also, the taboo God is helping me to see the undiscerned, unrecognized, denied, or minimized good things... the strengths and truths of myself, others, religions, other belief systems and spirituality and new age, complementary and alternative healing, energy healing, spiritual healing, and secular or mainstream societal or subcultural values systems too,, and societies, psychology and individuals, and my family, and my husband, and my child, and my life and ways of raising my daughter and books and new ideas I’m finding in the online library I have oodles of books that are like a whole nother world of possibilities excessive and unbelievable (and way more books and ideas than I could eve really read so it’s hard to see where to start and I know that many of the books there would sound much better than they really would be once I read them, because so it seems often in my experience, thinking something will change my life but no, it’s much fluff or just the wrong angle for me or whatever.  Anyway, all the while it feels like I’m having to come to terms with the reality that everything and everything altogether is way more fragile and flawed than I ever wanted to realize it is.  Though if it’s that fragile the only grace in that is that once I see things for their true reality then I can do what has to be or can be done and let go of what can’t be done and it’s an ever changing possibility, day by day and moment by moment and in that space of knowing how flawed everyone and everything really seems to be, and all the held up ideals are flawed too, religions, and philosophies and psychology and all these different things are so very flawed I am seeing, but in that knowing, knowing that the cultural norms and moral ideals held up by the average person too are full of holes and wrongness and denial and distortion, but through all that there is a strength in seeing that we don’t need to be what we cannot be and we cannot be it, of course.  And what slim sliver of possibility of what we can be or the road less taken that lets us transform things with possibilities that are far outside the ideal, that is slowly being found.  The field of thistles is a field of wishes and possibilities.  But it might fall through.  Living on the outskirts of society, a cast off being, between the seams of life, unwanted, taboo and transient, that is how I feel.  Such a life is insecure by nature and might fail ant any time.  Fail irreparably and yet, maybe, hopefully not, so that is where I am.  If one gets strong enough and gather the resources needed you can live on the outskirts of normalcy yet still be very safe, healthy, and well and stable, in some cases so it’s my hope for my future, just so that I can keep my heart and the hearts of my loved ones from bein destroyed.  It’s all I want, just to not have our hearts and souls destroyed, no trace of pride or arrogance here, but in my desire to stand alone, to succeed and be so strong it’s taking a stance against overpowering odds to try to just keep our hearts and souls from being permanently decimated.  The security and certainty that we won’t be lost causes forever. 

[paganchristian]

And another place, this time, the Atlantic, St. Augustine, Florida.  The most depressed city, statistically speaking, I once heard.  A lighthouse.  A sea filled with shells.  A haven of different unique animals in various parks.  For me the area of course, it wasn’t memories of sadness and depression, but it was just a vacation, living in a world of nature found between the seams.  I feel like my life is designed this way.  So my life is equally vacation-like, even though I do real work and do my best. Like someone who has learned to live with a life-threatening disease and has come to terms with everything and has found deep veins of joy and meaning and eternal transcendence.  In their illness, they have to live as a convalescent, and they have free time to let their mind wander, relax, enjoy nature, and spend time with children, even if they can do little that adults see as valuable or successful.  Their life might feel like a vacation, full of joy and love, meaning, comfort, hope, deeper insight, if they’re lucky to reach that point in coming to terms with it all.  Not that they have a life free of pain, worry, and sadness, because some of what will result or might result in the wake of their death could be heart-rending, hopeless, tormented, endless.  Not for them, but for those they love the most. Some situations there is nothing to do  but let go.  Leaving the final say for God to determine or for fate or luck or destiny or the opposite of that, maybe the horror of free choice gone awry in a world where all of our choices make a very tangled trap of webs.  But I still feel like God will help me with all of my distress and problems, well enough.  And if I am wrong and must go down waving the flag of surrender, only to finally drown.  Then if it is that way I feel in the end it will be ok.  That someone somewhere will forgive and understand and give some kind of peace that passes all understanding, and all conceptions of fairness, sense, order, and dignity and self-control, well not all limits,.. There are still my limits on self-control and morality, to certain depths I will never fall.  I feel like in spite of all my weakness and all my failures and all the rules and beliefs  I can’t subscribe to and practices I can’t follow, I will be swept into the arms and carried by the taboo God, the grace, forgiveness.  Love, healing, ...  God’s love and healing will be, after the fact, after my life fails, and even while it is failing,... He will be correcting the path of what this world could not save.  Correcting it in my heart, my energy, my mind and soul, even if my outer actions can’t show what my soul feels is happening, while I feel I am always getting continually saved because of reaching, trying my best, asking, and understanding, and connecting with Him.  Maybe all the more my sheer and miserable near total defeat is an all the more greater sense of connection to overcoming death, overcoming the death of not just body, also my mind, heart, life, dignity, and the abject failure of death of self, lets me go, lets me down, flowing like water to the transcendence of self, humility that can’t be lessened further into a more worthless defeat of all outer striving or self-pride or taking credit in any way, as they say one should never.  Things are going better than my worlds and words can say.  Worlds, I wrote, then, when I meant to say, better than my words can say.  But worlds, it fits.  Better than the world can ever get it, because they can’t hold the deepest despair in a container with the highest joy and bliss and love and grace.  That is how I am defeated into a silence where words would only tarnish every more vigorous effort to explain what is going on with me.  My whole life is the highest and the lowest, sewn together tightly so there is no use talking about my life which others can’t seem to understand.  

[paganchristian]

The Pacific Ocean near San Francisco.  I’ve been a bit silent for a little while, not just a few weeks on this blog but in real life in my mind, my psyche, my soul, my life and its machinations, and my body, the external events, the social interactions, and even my motherhood and my somewhat peripheral marriage and our all day (well half or more a day) homeschool that I live with every day... All of these things seem to feel like they are quieting to this low hum of letting my mind go where and how and when it needs, hiding away in some cove in my inner mind.  It’s a good thing, lately, for me.  I’m finding answers and healing in there, in the silence.  God is coming through.  Realizations are coming through to me too.  Safety of a taboo God, just me and them, together, while life continues in its mess speeding through.  Through me, like life just speeds right through me like a racing train gutting out my mind, heart, nerves, emotions, body and soul and yet, through it all there is this presence of God that I am connecting to and even if in the real world apparent life of things I seem to be just vacant, devastated, in some part of me, I am in Gods’ energy and God is in my energy and mind, heart, insights, answers, and I think that piece by piece like a puzzle my problems might be gradually put together so they can be taken apart and removed or reorganized into a more healthy designs.  After first putting together the view so I can see where to start or what I am working with at all.  But even if the view was never fully crystallized, the taboo God doesn’t help me take out the incongruent pieces, the reforming of the puzzle is not made complete, the healing of my real life is not brought into existence in the concrete world, then still I sense this peace, even if that feat of healing and insight against tremendous currents and dangers never takes place and coalesces, coagulates into one great whole.  Life was not meant to be a proving ground in which we are separated like wheat from the chaff.  It’s much more messy and incomplete oftentimes and just as sacred in that lost hope and trying.  In the small graces, love and insight and healing, held up as a weak flag of surrender against the overwhelming background of defeat.  What we cannot help cannot be held against us and trying is the grace that the taboo God accepts.  

[paganchristian]

A rare snow, from a long time ago, and a cardinal visiting, and our girl cat watching.  Cardinals and other birds often come when you have feeders and it is a cold day.  And many migratory birds too, come through where we live in spring and fall.  This spring we have purple finches nesting on our porch, as they’ve done a few times in the last years.  But there was a bird that might have attacked the nest, because my husband said that he saw a black bird with a yellow beak on the porch and the finches were fighting it off.  Still the parents remain on their nest, the father feeding the mother, as he does, and so maybe there are some eggs or perhaps they keep doing that even if there aren’t?  I don’t know, not an expert on such things by any means.  But I love the song of the purple finches, totally love, love, love it!  It is so musical and sweet, dreamy and cheerful.  It has often cheered me in these spring times over the last few years, including when my cats were ill and dying, a couple of years ago.  Funnily, on the day that my husband said that he saw that blackbird harassing the finches, I felt some strange urge to open my window blinds that open onto the porch where the nest is, in my bedroom, where I rarely open the blinds.  I was lying there that day on my laptop, and I’d just posted on the same day on this blog earlier, a picture of a baby mockingbird, which then I wrote this post of how it was making cute high-pitched noises and being fed and taught to fly by its mother, and then I went on to write a post about other people and how I don't’ know how to relate to their loudness and hyperactivity, or something or other, ... Kind of suggesting that most people can seem to me kind of like cute, naïve, unaware and sometimes too hyper and loud baby animals to me, it feels like,...  And I don’t recall exactly what I wrote, but basically it was like I was feeling introverted and a little bit like I just couldn’t stand normal society, normal social interactions, normal human nature, I don’t fit, and they also pick on me, but I don’t know if I wrote all that, anyway, that is the general idea, give or take some of it maybe.  Then the thing happened with the blackbird attacking the nest, as my husband told me later that night.

Anyway, cardinals, ..  a typical association for them is that they mate for life.  A rather unusual thing for birds to do, so it’s notable.  And of course, the males are the more noticed usually, the bright red colors, but I also think that the females are beautiful, and I like their shades of tan, brown and reddish feathers, and greenish kind of goldish, anyway, really pretty I think, and the bright orange beaks.  But I was thinking of the idea of monogamy and fidelity and of mating for life, being married for life and all that.  I was thinking that marriage has many benefits for me, even when I don’t like it, even when it tests me to my limits.  Even when it seems abusive.  It’s not considered “correct” to say such things, but I feel like it’s true sometimes.  Not that I think it is always true, or will always be true for me, or has always been true, but over the long run, maybe it’s true so far, and maybe I hope it will remain true.  Sometimes the very things that are most upsetting and restrictive end up being the things that push me to grow, to search inside myself, or to reach out to spirit and to God.  Sometimes the things that I don’t like and that feel they will break me truly make me strong and makes me find sides of myself I didn’t know existed, and those new dimensions of my self help me.  When that kind of thing happens due to impersonal situations, then it’s often accepted, perhaps a little begrudgingly by some, who don’t always want to find the silver lining and resent those who see rainbows in storms.  I don’t necessarily thing that every storm has a rainbow (literally they don’t, lol but even figuratively, they don’t always either), and I understand that.  But if someone has found their own rainbow that far outweighs the storm, or even just slightly outweighs it and is better overall than a clear cloudless day, then that is their right and only they can say that is what is true and how it is for them, and why criticize or resent or argue?  It’s just because of jealousy and also the fear of judgment that people get angry over such positive people.  Positivity is indeed used to judge and condemn others for not being positive enough, often.  I really hate that and I’ve been there.  It’s far too unique and subjective to make many of the generalizations that are used by many people, about how and when we should all be positive and upbeat.  

But still even among those who are all about positive thinking and finding rainbows in the storms, they often will draw the line and only storms that were impersonal or storms that are about mistakes or suffering that could not be prevented, those are the only storms where silver linings are acceptable.  For a situation of choosing to stay somewhere that someone is treating you badly?  That is shamed, that is not an acceptable storm to find silver linings and say that the rainbow and the stormy day are better than the clear day. But I think sometimes even then it really is that the rainbow makes the whole day better than the cloudless one.  Literally speaking, I like storms, like the rain, the clouds, the fog, the darkness, the lightning and wind, and all those things.  I love it.  But you know, metaphorically speaking, the pain of life, the wrongness, the confusion, burden, exhaustion, lostness and all that can lead to a wonderful view, insights, gifts, healing, lessons, energy, intuition, perspective, strengths, resilience, being tested, being pushed to the limit to the corner, to find a secret way out that you didn’t know even existed but not only it exists, it is the most amazing way ever.  That you would have never found if not for being cornered into what felt it would destroy you or at the least, leave you weak, broken, a shadow of your former glory.  Maybe you are a shadow of yourself till you find that hidden way, and you don’t know it’s there and for months or years or even decades wandering you think you’ve been defeated but you were buried like a long-delayed seed to germinate and grow beyond all wonder one day, and become something someone never knew existed because they all passed by the opportunity to be trapped in suffering.  And that is shunned, not just in terms of expecting people to find their rainbows outside of being trapped in abuse and such things, but also it’s seen as wrong because we’re expected to leave behind abuse, or codependency, or whatever, regardless of rainbows, and silver linings, .. we’re expected to be strong enough and shamed when we aren’t.  Of course, among some, or maybe many, I don’t know, but among at least some people, they are seeing that it’s not so clear-cut after all.  It’s not so simple and doable for everyone, or wise or right or healthy to force them from their moldering cocoon which is still the only safe place for them to be at the time, maybe for along time will they can strengthen themselves by breaking out of the shell,...  Not being cut out of the shell, like a butterfly who cannot fly unless they free themselves, whose strength is found in being bound up in a shell and then by struggling out of the chrysalis.  When the time is ready they’ll be strong enough and only their struggle can reach them to that point of safety and strength.  Only their own struggle can safely make them strong.  

But I think that I’ve been trapped beyond the reach of any freedom that could be called at all safe,...  , even when everyone was urging and shaming and abandoning me because of thinking I could and should do better for myself, but I really couldn’t or should not, even if I might could have made it, I could see that the cost of leaving would be far more harmful or unsafe and stunting, entrapping for me, than the terrible cost of.  That is why I stayed in a position where for years and decades I was cornered till I finally found a secret way out.  Not that I’m all the way out yet, and though there are treasures in this tunnel I’ve found, the world could cave in still on me, and shut me off from the rest of life.  And what will happen, time will tell, faith hopes I will hold on to its hand and maybe it can lead me to where I need to be.   staying. 

In some ways I think that this marriage leads me to an ideal love, with God, and spirit, because I’ve become so very disillusioned with love and sexuality in this world and with romance and relationships and even friendships too, not only because of my marriage but because of all I’ve seen and I’ve seen so very much of the world.  It’s certainly got a lot of good in it but I still feel I don’t fit even among the very best of it, as far as I can see.  I don’t fit among the best, nor the worst, nor any middle shade of goodness.  I don’t fit because I’m too weird for anyone, no matter how good, bad or average they seem.  I just don’t fit because I’m too weird and if that is the case then what better life than to seek spirit, who loves me in spite of my weirdness.  The world is full to bursting with lonely people who cannot be themselves, who are silenced and stifled, suffocated and hidden, demolished, nothing left of who they were, because the world cannot handle their real selves.  And sometimes they can get by faking an appearance of who they are, or even believing in that false self and happy enough, but for other people, like myself, one cannot fake it well enough, and will fall apart and not make it if they have to live where they cannot freely, safely be their true selves.  So what better place to find the love and authenticity and air and space and awareness and freedom to be me?  What better place than a marriage in which I get to live outside the norms of society, unwanted, unseen, unneeded, but for a few duties of childcare and housework and wifely duties.  haha  And if those wifely duties make me feel numb and hurt and horrified and traumatized, because of the fact they have to be done with someone who has abused me so horribly as to destroy my mind and heart, well, he doesn’t do that much anymore, and he even seem s to be deluded into thinking he is deeply loving to me and that I feel the same about him.  The demanded I put on an act of adoring him, because I don’t know, maybe it’s his mental illness.  So now he’s believed the act.  I still feel awful about it unless I use my imagination and not only that but prayer, that God save me from this torment, and God does.  And this way I sense my spirit lovers when I must be with my husband.  If not for that, I would feel like I was being sexually abused and suffering physical pain and harm as well as emotional, which was what was happening before I learned that God can intervene in my situation.  I wasn’t being sexually abused in any physical sense, so I don’t mean to say that nor minimize that, because I know nothing about actual physical sexual abuse and it is probably much worse I guess.  But with my husband, there was no physical force used, but he made me feel like he’d divorce or cheat on me if I didn’t give him all he wanted, when I was repulsed and horrified by him altogether, but extremely unable to cope with life on my own, depressed, unable to drive, depressed in most workplace, to the point that I would have probably killed myself, been addicted to substances, ran to whatever miserable relationships I could find, delude myself with delusional spiritual seeking and escapism, but probably destroyed myself in fairly short order, and I knew that,... And if I consented to him cheating, well, all worries of diseases aside (assuming he’d be careful) still there is the risk of him leaving me then of course, and even if he didn’t leave me, likely the mental abuse he put me through would become more abusive and degrading from there, so of course I did not agree to that.  and so to me, it felt like abuse (but in the modern age they’d say I’m responsible for myself and he didn’t literally physically force me so it’s not abuse, so, just to clarify what I mean when I say I’d “feel sexually abused”,...  The only coercive abuse relating to sex that he ever tried on me was reproductive coercion, on two occasions, through manipulative means, but shocking, unhidden.  Natural birth control methods we agreed upon were willingly not used by him.  That is how my daughter was conceived, though I was miserably unable and unwilling to have and raise kids, I repeatedly told my husband.  But I decided to keep my child because I convinced myself it would be ok, so thank goodness it has been so far.  Of course, this religion I’m looking into says no birth control, except for the rhythm method, so they would probably disagree even with what we were doing, not that I was in that religion then nor am I now,...  Anyway, that’s another story, another taboo that I don’t feel like discussing now if ever).  

But I discovered God’s help this way, when he gave me lovers to cover the pain of having to sleep with my husband, to make it literally, physically feel like there was another one there, instead of my husband (I felt the energy of their astral body intensely), and my husband began to act differently, in very distinctive, too strange and too much for coincidence ways, that related to the particular lover (because there were many of them, each very unique, over time).  and I discovered all of this only through my own prayers, my own ideas.  I tried to pray and though I thought it was outside religion’s ideas of what might be acceptable, I prayed for this help and it was given to me.  But that was when I was a Hindu anyway, more than Christian or anything.  And I kept on with this and though the spirit lovers have changed, the way it works remains the same pretty much.  And I think that being made to be sexual might be good for me.  If I wasn’t married, I don’t know what would happen to my sexual self.  I rather think it would go into hibernation, but maybe because it is forced into existence, that is good for me.  I now have visions of lover and desires and affection and romance and joy and true adoration, deep compatibility, insights, conversations, with the most perfect spirit loves, astral loves, who give me so much good advice and ideas that I can’t get, that arrive like perfect sane amazing hallucinations.  But that doesn’t mean I’m “crazy”, because apparently sane people often do hallucinate, I think... I googled it and found a lot of results, and of course, in history, there are many cultures where the shamans and spiritual people hallucinate and there are religious visions and whatever.  They aren’t usually seen as being “crazy”, and when I googled it apparently there are a lot of articles and sites about sane people regularly, frequently hallucinating.  And, not just religious, or shamans, or anything, just average people.  And some of these articles that are from what look quite reputable sources I think.  I only glanced a bit at some of it, because got distracted and busy with other things, then closed the pages, because I just don’t have time but maybe later I’ll look into it more sometime, who knows.  All I can see its I appear to be sane to me, and better than that, because my visions heal me and give profound insights that I can find nowhere else, that no one else seems to have.  What is crazy about that?  Nothing as far as I am concerned.  And what is demonic either, since some religions would say, the devil is misleading you.  But I can’t see any reason to assume or suspect that it’s harmful, and I do believe that there are demonic influences that can disguise themselves as beings of light and very subtly lead you astray, by giving you so much good but giving you bad in the guise of good, that you would never notice.  Yet in spite of all that, I have carefully watched and observed very closely over months and even years and I don’t think that is like that.  I think as far as I can tell this is pure.  

And yes I know the religion I’m considering would say it’s not pure, it’s adultery, completely intolerable, but I don’t have faith in them being right.  I have considered what feels “correct” (possibly, but not necessarily correct, only what they insist is “correct”, because Jesus said so in the Bible or whatever... Though Jesus often spoke in a nonliteral kind of way, hyperbole, etc), and what feels good and loving and what feels happy and what I have found is this experiences of the spirit and astral lovers feels good and loving, but neither totally “happy”, nor “correct” (and nor can it convince me it’s likely necessarily incorrect either), it is something I have to take on faith even if religion tells me I’m wrong, the same as I’d have to take religious beliefs on faith even if other religions tell me I’m wrong, etc.  I’m following my heart, sense, rational thought, experience, and my intuition, and I’m observing what works over time and trying different things so I can get a good, balanced view of what is really going on and the long range effects, not just the immediate feelings or short term effects.  It seems this is really good, I can really tell this is good, pure, wholesome, helpful, not harmful, not sinful, not unless there is some mystery to the whole thing that i have not yet discovered, and have no reason to believe, and I think that the God I know and believe in, if he is real and not just some kind of hallucination of my mind and strange magical conjuration of my energy or whatever, if he really is real, then, the God I know would not condemn me for trying to save my own heart and soul and life from destruction, by staying close to and holding on to and immersing in the love, healing and wisdom that come from these visions,...  He’d not say, “It’s hell for you, because you didn’t reject those demonic visions that looked like pure love and absolute healing and transformational betterment of your soul and character... you deserve hell, my beloved child...  Nor would my own attempt to do what is good, loving, wise, sane, smart, logical, intuitive, and all around the best good i can see or sense, the most loving good I can sense, that would not condemn myself to hell, if you buy the view that we put ourselves into hell.  I can’t buy that argument.  I can’t see how this would lead me to the existence of hell.  Keep your faith in Hell and my doomed for Hell status.  I don’t have faith in that.  Nor fear of it, just feeling mind-boggled over it, like this shows just how distant my mind and heart are from so many other religious people.  

Another good thing about marriage for me, so far, however bad it’s been, dangerous, however uncertain, terrifying the future sometimes seems, but in addition to the love of God and spirit that my marriage provides me the space and the impetus to pursue, there is the opportunity that i can be immersed in being a mother.  That is a huge thing for me.  There is also the immense expanse of free time that I get to read, to study, if I can motivate and focus my scattered mind, my broken faithless, despairing heart to do so, and for many years I did manage to study so many amazing things, even things that I could never have learned in any normal social setting or any workplace nor any college environment, because it was things in books, things in inner exploration, divination and journaling,  and things that i learned from observation and interaction online in communities that are not like anything that could exist in the real world.  Because the real world doesn’t collect groups of rare people from across the globe and gather them together to converse on the things that no one else would even listen to much less talk in depth about.  And I spent to much time online, and doing divination, and journaling and mining the depths of my mind, heart, subconscious, and intuitive, creative self over very slow, exhaustive and difficult inner self work,  and reading rare books, that I'd never have done if not for the freedom and time that my marriage gave me.  

I know these examples of my own particular marriage and life aren’t something that may be generalized for all marriages.  They have to do with many things beyond just being married, and they even have to do with my illnesses, too, because my illnesses and mental illnesses and severe chronic symptoms also helped me learn, and my mental conditions, adhd, autism spectrum, bipolar, sensory processing disorder and even just the fact that I was so weird, and my weird personality, obsessive spiritual interests and compulsions, my extreme intuitive creative way of seeing and experiencing life, and how my weird personality made me so helplessly isolated and cut off from the normal world and life,.. Even my traumatic childhood and lifelong traumatic events,...  .  And all of these things just pushed me to be cornered in life where eventually, often much delayed, after feeling I was buried for years, I finally was able to grow, like a seed that thought I was defeated, rotting and dead, but instead I finally grew, though buried, ... I was strong, indeed, because I was buried, I was rooted, and safe.  But it was not a one time event, like a seed, once planted, then grows, and is well.  It was more like I was cornered, repeatedly, and every time that I had to escape, I was cornered in more ways.  I was cornered in many ways, with many enemies at once all pursuing me, and just when I thought I’d found a safe way to escape from or manage or defeat a particular enemy, another would be pursuing me and sometimes ones that I thought I’d gotten under control would find ways to invade and take over again. Or one enemy I thought I’d gotten in control and manageable, would change form and get worse again (like my unpredictable husband who did things to totally change the game after years of being one way, becoming much worse without any warning or signs that could have led me to think tit might happen,...  all in his head, nothing happening in our external life that would have made me predict it.. and that is why the future for myself and my daughter looks so uncertain and dangerous and hanging by a thread of hope, faith and innovation even if one day I might need to leave him or if he dies, which isn’t that unlikely given all the factors of his health issues, and so on..  

[paganchristian]

There are two trees here that looked really interesting to me, when I first saw them, and took this picture, but noticed just why maybe it was I felt that way, later on.  It was a special wonderful, magical, strange feeling day, near my daughter’s birthday and we’d just gone to this celebration that we do around the time of her birthday every year, ... 

And I felt some strange energy looking at these trees, and I knew as I looked at the landscape that something seemed to be calling me to take those pictures, of this view, and I didn’t really quite know why.  If I am remembering correctly.  But then I think when I looked back later on the pictures that was when I first noticed something interesting about those trees, which later walking on this trail I would see again, and that is that there are two trees that seem to reach out to each other and to grow in a kind of circular shape, as if there is some invisible line between them.  It makes me think of twin trees, trees that are linked together and depend on and help each other and suffer when the other dies and grow in ways to help each other and even sacrifice their own resources to help the other when it is suffering and things.  My daughter and I read about this one day for a school project.  It was an article interviewing Peter Wohlleben, who wrote the book  The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World, looked it up for memory’s sake.  So yeah, he thinks trees communicate and feel in some sense.  

But it makes me think about family ties and relationships, and marriage, and how we grow together, build our lives and lifestyles, and worlds and homes and identities and children’s identities and futures and so many things around this and even when it is just wrong and hurtful and abusive, still sometimes it’s a safety net in a world that doesn’t always have good safety nets for everyone.  And I’ve been thinking about all that, and about the religious assumptions and beliefs and rules and whatever regarding marriage, within the religious group I’ve been looking into.  Not that I’m going to join the group and not that I would let it determine all my choices regarding things like this, but just because I can kind of see how maybe things could be different than what things appear at face value.  

There could be more mystery to marriage than it seems, but that might not always work, and still, what if it works for some, because they are given that gift of grace, and others who aren’t then what?  But I just have to look at the alternatives, use my own heart, mind, sense, intuition, and experience, look at the lives of others (who often are much different from me anyway so it’s not necessarily so good to judge based on what works for them, but it’s something to look at and see anyway).  And then I have to take the leap of faith, not blind faith in dogma, but mystical kind of faith in what feels true and good and loving, not “correct”, in a way that might not really be correct, and not happy in a way that really won’t give me lasting confident happiness, but a happy medium, that is the closest to true goodness I hope I can see and sense and feel and know and find...  

And so it’s just some thoughts, just to remember because so many things about marriage seem more mysterious to me than what first meets the eye.  The more I see over time, the more I feel like this and also I even wonder if my path of faith is now changing my husband, so that maybe things would improve over time, not quickly, and not without fits and starts, but what if it does, by some mysterious power?  What if?  Not that he’ll be perfect or even share my faith at all, and I think the changes comes through mysterious grace, nothing to do so much with how I’m acting or his feelings or thoughts about my path I’m on.  It’s truly strange how he and my whole life seem to be changing, as if by luck, blessings from God.  

But if he does change and grow, by God’s help and mystery, then maybe he’ll become more a person who I can see myself living with and maybe things will happen, blessings and opportunities and insights, that will help me see how to be ok, more than ok, thrive in some ways, in my soul, heart, even though the challenges of loving and living in suffering can also be growth, a way to see deeper, turn inward, love better.  

But, not always, because I think that sometimes too much abuse and incompatibility and use and manipulation has no apparent  benefit, and I’m not one quick to assume there is some hidden gift.  Though after years of living with unbearable pain I found gifts in that pain that I never knew till the retrospect view revealed them.  So it’s just not so simple as people sometimes want to make it  to be.  

And all these things are thoughts intuitions and prayers both spoken and unspoken.  Prayers felt in my bones, inescapable, silent scream, confusion of hope and despair, other days a deep dissociated repression, planted deep even when unaware, repeated prayers that might materialize into something more clear later on, we’ll see.  

But putting these thoughts out there into the universe, maybe God will respond or something will become clearer so this is a practice in focus and intent to bother blogging this vague tangle of lack of answers, problems, embarrassment, taboo, fitting nowhere, with no one,...  feeling rather very stupid and inarticulate and dull and sad and annoying, trying to write it all out here.  Run on sentences and repetition and all but I feel it does me much good, like journaling often does, and it doesn’t have to sound pretty or be all that well thought out and clear to help, oftentimes.  

[paganchristian]

I think this is a  little blue heron, but it’s so cast in shadows that it is hard to tell, though the lake in the background is lit up, but the trees over the lake edge were shading it.  As it steps its big feet and curvy (well not curvy, angular, the opposite of curvy) legs around the invasive though beautiful water hyacinth plants. As doused in shadow as it is, it could look like it is a black heron, maybe some little night heron, like we see once in a while, but they aren’t just black and have other markings sometimes, very distinctive looking, magical looking to me.  Doused in shadow, but I wanted to spell “dowse”, which makes me wonder and think of dowsing which has other connotations for me (yeah, of course, I always have to think of symbols and associations, I just do, until I get sick of it for rare segments of time).  

Anyway, so the heron and this scene, this picture as it turned out, it makes me think of calm and dark and soothing shadows, and of also soothing bright, light, the waves, the sound, the sun and light reflected on waves, the sounds of the waves against the shore, the sounds of water, the cool breeze off the water and all the things that it reminds me of, the walks around the woods and through the trees seeing the lake, below the ledge of earth where we walk. 

It makes me remember and think a little about today, and how it has been for us, because at 4 in the morning we got up to watch a meteor shower in our lawn chairs.  Sadly to say, I had to go inside because my asthmas was activated by the cold air, but still in a way I almost liked that, to have this quiet time where my mind was too tired to even want to do much, to even want to get on the internet or listen to music or think, but I was still fully awake, begun on my coffee.  And so my husband and my daughter watched the meteor shower for about an hour and then dawn began to rise and my daughter went back to sleep for a few hours, but I stayed awake and though it’s not even that much different, not that much missed sleep, but I got maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep and I feel different, and my daughter slept as much as usual or perhaps more than usual, to make up for the interruption in sleep or because it’s cold or why I don’t know. But anyway, all day she has been acting different, and all day I’ve been feeling similar to how I see her and sense her feeling (because we have many of the same issues, I can just sense how she’s feeling without even being able to pinpoint the exact name for the symptom or the behavior and so on).  

She has been seeming to be in her kind of adhd, sensory processing activated state, but not in a bad way, just in a cute and funny way.  Not that it is ever really “bad” but rather, difficult for her and/or me, sometimes.  But sometimes even when it is difficult it seems to be beautiful too, like there are these altered perceptions and ways of doing things and sensory heightened awareness and creative and intuitive insights that seem heightened and signs coming from the beyond and all this can seem to be linked somehow to the adhd and sensory and autism and other unusual mental conditions we have.  As well as to allergies, and to my bipolar and other things.  It’s not trying to minimize the hardship it can bring us at times, but it isn’t too severe for us so it’s not usually too problematic, especially in the lifestyle w have, now, homeschool, Waldorf, creative, fun, easy-going, so I don’t know .. 

But in the “real world”, the normal real world of society I have never been very well adapted and by the time I reached high school I was suffering so much because of not fitting and every where after that I continued to suffer so much, even if there were things I liked, but it was never a really balanced healthy state for me to be in, having to work or go to school or college, after the age of maybe 11 or 12 onwards.  That was also when my depression or bipolar/cyclothmia began.  I’m just pondering.  

Because, ... I just think it’s good for me to acknowledge and remind myself to these sorts of things so I can appreciate and savor and not rush through what is seen to be so very wasteful, time-wasting, and altered consciousness, inability to focus, etc, but it gives me and my daughter such great gifts.  I don’t really think it is best to live like this all of the time because after a while my mind starts to become so very disorganized like this and my life follows suit.  But once in a while it’s amazing, healing, inspiring, insightful, and just adds this transforming jolt of energy and newness and perspective to everything in my life.  

[paganchristian]

I’m not sure, I think this might be bindweed, which we saw on the sunny patch of ground, sun filtering through deciduous trees, (note- looked it up and it is purple bindweed, native, not invasive)...  We saw it growing in a very beautiful, dappled forest full of unique and rare plants, and ancient history too,...  on a forest trail though a city park one day, and if it is bindweed, then I think it might be considered invasive, but I think it’s quite pretty.  I wonder about the name and why it’s called bindweed.  Does it bind things in its vines, wrapping around them?  I think about the ties that bind, or can seem to choke, but can sustain, and hold together the ground below, keeping it from eroding away,...  but when do you tell which is which, and both, sometimes, like kudzu...  And also I think of binding things, binding things together, and binding things, like keeping them trapped, dispelling their power.  And of course, there is the double bind thought again, about religious beliefs, about my life, that comes up when I think about the word “bind”,..  Then I think of bound feet and other kinds of binding related things. And of book bindings, my books and journals that I write, my facts and ideas jotted down on loose pages, needing to be bound and put on a shelf, in order,... booklets, all falling apart, disorganized, scattered, proliferating,...  Hmm,... And I think of a spine, the spine of a book or the spine of oneself, can the spine, can having a spine be winding like a vine (not intending to rhyme, think it’s my weird state of consciousness that does that to me)., ... And bind makes me think of bondage, slavery, imprisonment and suffering, and of being controlled, or manipulated, or mentally controlled, against your own will, beyond your awareness, etc.  And of God’s ability to bind us, to have ultimate, omniscient and omnipotent power over things.  And then I also think about morning glories, but I’m not sure if this plant is related to them or not, it looks like it but I think I read it’s a look-alike but not related?  (Note - I looked it up and it’s related, but a distinct species).   And morning glory, peace and joy after the storm, with the breaking dawn, the renewal that comes from a good night’s sleep, somehow often washing much of the troubles away, it can be, if the problems aren’t too bad, or too deep, at least often giving new perspectives, and so in terms of all the binds in life, that too is often released by things as simple a =s a good night’s sleep or waiting, faith, hope, joy, love, and looking on the bright side, trying new things.  

 I don’t know.  Again with morning glories and more “invasive” bindweed, (even if some of them are native, called invasive in gardens), then,... I think of the look-alikes, and harmful look-alikes, invasive, instead of harmless look-alikes that protect themselves by falsely appearing dangerous.  Makes me think of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, or of good things gone awry, or things like that.  And once more, since this is a native plant and not invasive, I think more again about unwanted, blamed innocent things, or called “invasive”, because there is a bindweed that is invasive and this apparently does take over, but it’s just natural for it to do so, so,... Just thoughts, hm... 

[paganchristian]

These flowers, that we saw hanging many baskets among many live  beautiful live oaks at an open kind of courtyard seating area in a garden,... And they remind me of someone, and were a kind of symbol for them, for me, for a while, so to remind myself and imprint it on my memory and feelings, the way it does when I blog things, I will post it here.  And seeing these flowers now is just uplifting to me too, fuchsias, I love their colors and forms, especially the colors in such bold combinations, though beautiful individually, seldom do you see such bold unique mixtures in one plant.  I think they’re a plant of the rainforests, and do well in the temperate rainforest climates in Washington too, I think.

[paganchristian]

This is a picture of a memory from a park when we were stuck happily in the rain in a pavilion covered with chalk drawings that someone had made, and there was this other guy there who talked a lot to us, also rained in, and he reminded me of someone else who I thought was a long-lost soulmate (he was quite different from the soulmate, actually, but just similar enough in his some very unique and awesome, funny, interesting, heartwarming, down to earth and humble behavior that he had and personality and way of speaking and phrases, and his mannerisms and the unusual kind of lifestyle which he lived,...  And all of that felt to me like a comfort from spirit.  And that soulmate had kind of drifted and I was feeling all this pain and this felt like a salve for me.  I call it soulmate, but it was all a drama in my own mind so ok, visions and signs and such and so on and if you follow the whole twin flame movement or whatever, lol then it was like that, except that many of those who claim twin flame status seem to be totally ordinary relationships or far worse than ordinary relationships, and this that I was experiencing with this guy was definitely bizarre synchronicities, and many, many unbelievable and life changing events... It was the real thing they describe in some of the more out of this world twin flame theories,.  Except once again, it was all visions and signs, (but the signs and synchs were so deep and triggering and unbelievable for me, it was like he was reading my mind and it affected my energy in these outrageously intense ways which lasted days on end and the visions and the energy really did heal my life, truly,...  and I couldn’t escape it.  I went somewhere, not somewhere he usually was, but whenever and wherever I went, there he was, like we were linked with a psychic bond and driven to go to the same places at the same time and say and do the same things.  And another thing, he'd be constantly talking about things that were so insanely just what I was feeling, thinking, going through, totally weird, unlikely things that he could know nothing about in my life.  And though it was not at all any kind of real harmonious actual real life friendship or interactions at all, as I barely knew the guy).  

Anyway, the pictures of the rain makes me think of the other day, after a dinner of stir-fried mushrooms and other vegetables and herbs (mostly mushrooms), we went outside with our rainboots on, in the muddy yard where it had just rained all day.  And the cat came by to see us, and it immediately began to rain so we retrieved our umbrellas and sat there all evening, for hours, shading the cat from the rain, sitting down in our rainboots, sitting on the patio, hearing the rain on our umbrellas and on the tin roof of the makeshift shed next to us, hearing the crickets and frogs and feeling the cool air, the breeze, the moisture, and smelling the mud and the fragrances that the plants seem to release into the air when it’s very foggy or rainy.  And seeing the glare of lights on the road, going by.  The cat sitting, purring, kneading, or sitting, nearby but not too close, as cats often seem to do, more aloof, while my daughter tried to get his attention and leaped from edifices (safely, of course, no worries), with her umbrella held overhead, like some kind of character from Mary Poppins.   Everything felt perfect, so numb, so vague, so empty, so mindless and calm and irritating, boring, uncomfortable, soothing, mesmerizing.  Why what was irritating and boring was also joyful and soothing and meaningful, I am not exactly sure how I can explain, because it wasn’t just alternating feelings of boredom and irritation with feelings of peace and happiness.  It was more than just that.  Sometimes it was both the good and the bad feelings at the same time and the bad feelings seemed to make way for and cultivate the good feelings.  Sometimes the bad feelings seem to tamp down the more acute left-brained focused consciousness and open up a doorway for the subconscious, intuitive self to move forward and come through and give it a language to speak in all the mundaneness and drudgery and stuck in the mud feelings, a grounded medium through which spirit itself emerges in what looks like resistance and stagnation but things slow down and calm down enough for the refined and elevated, mysterious and creative, insightful and inspired divine things and innocence, purpose, and meaning, directed efforts and all these things to come forth in my life.  Or so it’s felt for me. 

[paganchristian]

A scarlet kingsnake, (or maybe it’s a Florida scarlet snake, which looks similar too) which looks a lot like a coral snake, but the colors are in a different pattern.  Laying there like a letter C, which makes me think of some things.  Its appearance can be a protection and is intended so in nature but of course among people it could lead to them being targeted, when kingsnakes eat other poisonous snakes, but are harmless themselves.  So that makes me think too, some more, ...  Anyway, we have a lot of really interesting snakes that we have seen in our travels and wanderings.  They can be quite beautiful and fascinating.  Though the other day I did almost step on a moccasin, that’s what I get for thinking I can walk off the trail in the grass after a heavy rain, but thankfully we were ok.  (The grass wasn’t that tall but the snake blended in with the mud underneath and so next time I’ll just stay on the paved trail.  And more thought again, more associations come up about that too.

And I so wanted to walk on the soft ground, it felt so good, so right to me, rather than the hard pavement, but oh well, silly me, I should know better and it’s not as bad as it seems to walk on the pavement or maybe I can just watch more carefully next time or stay home, many options).  

[paganchristian]

A very blurry butterfly we saw in the mountains long ago.  I think it’s a pearly crescent.  We are now raising butterfly caterpillars, American lady butterflies, from a butterfly growing kit we got as a gift.  They are so cute and fun to watch, and we’ve had them now a few days so far.  They remind me a little, but not a lot of this butterfly, which I think is smaller as well as somewhat different wing markings and shape.  Anyway, butterflies, one of the ephemeral joys of this life and world.  We also will probably be raising more butterflies on our passion vines outside once they start to grow.  Last year so many fritillary caterpillars, and then butterflies that graced our garden all the summer long.  Though I think the wrens might have eaten some, but I’m surprised just how many caterpillars there were and butterflies still.  If you plant it they will come, so it seems with some of these plants, however tucked away our passion vines were, however rarely you seem to see that kind of butterfly in the area, but how do they find it?  Can they sniff it out on the air somehow?  Lol  I wonder. 

[paganchristian]

Tulip poplar tree that we saw, outside the cave area we visited.  With blooms on it.  I just love these flowers, the green, orange and yellow bold patterns, the cute cup shaped, curly tulips with thick stamens (or whatever those things are in the center of the flowers),...  And they just look like something from a children’s fairytale picture book to me, and up tall in trees, of all things.  And they attract hummingbirds.  

[paganchristian]

Underneath the pier, on the white sand beaches where I once lived nearby.  A place where sharks dwell.  No swimming within a certain distance, because of that reason, the sharks coming after the fish attracted by the fishermen on the pier.  This also reminds me of the torii gates of Shinto shrines, which torii gates mark the entrance to Shinto shrines, the gate from the mundane into the spiritual realms.  This looks like a slanted, swaying or knocked off balance path of torii gates, many doorway after doorway.  In the torii gates where there are many in a trail, the ones further along are said to lead to higher spiritual levels or something like that, and I think there are three levels.  Putting all these images together it makes me think of a crooked path to spirituality, where sharks roam, and an initiation that is dangerous and foolish, because of the slantedness of the pillars and the sharks.  Then I think, of the left-hand path when I think of a crooked path to spirit, but though that is often conceived of as being harmful and selfish in Western spiritual paths or paganism, and such, with Hinduism, it is not thought of as being harmful so much as just taboo, and using unconventional, sometimes stigmatized ways to reach higher states.  It is thought that some peoples’ nature requires them to use the left-hand path because they can’t abide or follow the same path that the sattvic, more peaceful practices of other Hindu sects require.  The left-hand path is not about really hurting anyone or being totally self-centered in every way.  It still considers morals, compassion, and things like that.  But it’s taboo in a few ways that general mainstream Hinduism avoids.  In the dark you can find answers, in the shadow like the ouroboros, eating its own tail, becoming a self-regulating, self-feeding system in and of oneself, by integrating the dark, the confusion, the limits and weaknesses, problems and biases of oneself and of life in this world, ...  as oneself where you meet the world, the life and world where we have to live and you have to be you living in this world. 

The path I can’t walk that my family, my husband and religions ask me to walk, or can I swim and can I transcend instead, float, above, find the way out by flipping the whole thing upside down, seeing outside the paradigm.  These are thoughts that come to my mind now.  If people can’t let me find them, because they put themselves too beyond my reach or my ability to ever reach, then I don’t have to make my life about reaching them.  My husband might demand more than I can give, try to take more than is fair, control more than is right, stifle what is good, fail to appreciate my gifts, silence my reality, make me fake my whole reality because I can’t speak it but not only that I can’t even feel it.  The things I need to do to live when I am just being myself lead to his anger and attack and control.  So even if I don’t tell him about it, the way it makes me feel makes me have to act in certain ways to deal with my feelings, my worries, my confusions, questions, and needs, but when I try to just act in those ways, even trying the best I can to keep it all out of his sight, it causes me to have to act in ways that end up triggering his attack, his control, his strangling away of my life, my mind, my voice, my self-expression.  He demands for me to give him things that I can’t give him if I’m to be true to my own reality, because it takes more than I can muster up, however I try.  I have to revolve my life around fakeness to give him what he wants.  But it’s not so much that he’s incredibly wrong and bad and extreme, but more than I’m incredibly abnormal and can’t give and can’t conform and can’t fake it and can’t hide things and can’t hold back in the ways that others do, ...  And this extends into my relationships with my family, my relationships with religions, my relationships with society, and culture, too. I have tried to change myself, heal myself, give myself therapy or seek that outside of myself in the available forms, follow spiritual and self-help paths and positivity and natural healing and meditation and hobbies and new age things and whatever, so many things, I have tried so much and it’s helped me so much but still I can’t help but be what others can’t even stand to be around, and what many others would try to distort, contort me into a shrunken person, a distortion, a shadow, a pale fog of who I might have ever been, ...  People like my husband would try.  They would engage me in endless hateful verbal abuse and severe crazy-making, manipulative abuse, to truly make me feel I’m losing my mind, my heart, every shred of energy, dignity, hope, joy, meaning, and sense in my world.  Narcissistic, sociopathic-seeming abuse and manipulation.  He seems far worse than the average covert manipulator, because from what I’ve read the others’ tricks are more clearly visible to me, but his tricks are very devious indeed, impossible to argue against, hateful and trickier than any examples I’ve seen given in books and websites about manipulative abuse.  He is extremely intelligent, but it seems that this part of his personality is operating at some kind of subconscious or altered state of consciousness.  It makes no sense, but it’s highly intelligent.  He is capable of seeming like a totally different person, caring, considerate, loving, responsible, normal in every way, mostly, but when this side of him comes up, it’s like a monster has been unleashed, and like he’s lost his mind entirely.  Before I had my daughter, for many years, he was so abusive in this way.  It really started getting bad a few years after we married.  And he was this way for so much of the time then that it left me paralyzed and despairing, miserable, lost, totally out of touch with myself, my deep inner true self.  Hiding from him, hiding who I was, to stay a bit safer, but I still was not safe and was totally miserable.  Now it’s much better but remnants of this kind of abuse still linger enough to stifle my true self, sometimes, somewhat.  Yet I know that the world would not let my true self exist either, because it doesn’t fit in the world, either, and so it would die, not always from abuse, but often from neglect, from mockery, a much milder form of abuse than narcissistic, entrapped abuse in an abusive marriage, but still mockery, yes if you want to call that abuse, or worse than mockery but still, the kind of cruelty that you can escape because you’re not married to the person.  And the world gives me abandonment and neglect and mockery and scorn and attacks and complete misunderstanding, and being completely ignored at best, in my deeper self, oftentimes.  I can’t live this way because my social needs, my needs for supporting myself, for work that I can tolerate, without becoming depressed or physically ill with my many sensitivities, those needs aren’t met nor even seen as valid by this world.  Religions, society, culture, my family member, my marriage, all say I’m not acceptable, not worthy, not wanted, have to follow rules I can’t follow, can’t be who I am because it’s hated and untolerated.  But I’m not some horrible person, it’s just that I have fragile, subtle, delicate needs that the world is not willing or ready to make a place for.  So there is a witch-hunt, demonizing things and people who are really harmless and good, and this is something that happens sometimes when you’re too far outside the norms of culture, norms, society or typical human nature either. 

Maybe I could make or find a life or patch a life together in which I can have what I need, a safe place to be, to be well, to be myself, for my mental and physical health needs, and personality and self-expression needs, and spiritual self and soul and the needs for my psyche, my self-exploration, the drives I can’t let go of to find answers and meaning and self-expression, absolutely compelled to do these things, so life better find a place for me or I might just not make it.  

But when there are too many things trying to make me take care of them all at once, and there is no way to move because I’m crowded in on all sides by others shoving and pushing, holding me down, forcing me along in directions I didn’t need or want to go, or holding me in place, unable to move where i need to go to get done what I need to do, or even trampling me over in the rush to do what they need or want to do but what I need and want to do are left rotting in the dust of nothingness.  There is no room.  All the hopes that sooner or later the peaceful harmony of life with my daughter, of homeschool, and housework, and arts and crafts and of my spiritual path and of nature, and whatever else, these little things that help me hold on for another day and try to find what I may as realizations rise up when and if they do and how they do if I can hold on to them before they sink down under the murkiness once more and are drowned again.  All that which is supposed to let me just make it, maybe it will become trampled too in time.  Sometimes there is not enough relief, enough peace or hope, love or joy or meaning, not enough of any of that to have faith, to feel anything worth feeling, or to do anything worth doing, or know anything worth knowing, and not enough to believe in anything worth what feels like it is worth believing in at all. And I’ve been there before.  

And so I can’t help but feel like I need to vent about this, I need to say it like it is.  I need to admit the full array of slowness, stagnation, completely covered in nothingness, drowned, unconsciousness and going crazy, forgetting who I am, losing my heart, that seems to get lowered down over me, choking out my life and mind and heart, against my will, powerless, and I don’t have to lessen the pain of that reality, by pretending it’s not how it is, not as bad, not as potentially hopeless.  I know that it might be hopeful too, but it’s not the guarantee people try to make it out to be.  

There often will be this extremely compromised state I am put into where the best thing I can have or do or be or try or even dream about trying, the very best I could hope or aim for is still horribly much lower than what anyone is willing to accept as tolerable, acceptable and valid.  Religions, moral systems, cultural norms, advice, friendship and family, marriage, whatever, none of these things accept a place for me and role for me where I am able to exit just as I am.  Where I’m able to be who I really am, take my time, process things as I need, go so slowly as I need, be stuck however long I need, focus on the earthy things if I need (like religions say not to), get down to that earthy level and the survival issues like the root chakra, and that analytical level like the third chakra, and the sacral chakra, childhood issue and inner child, and sensuality and pleasure, creativity and happiness. And the dreamy, surreal and otherworldly, ungrounded self too, the whatever chakra that would be.  lol  And the throat chakra, the self-expression, my uniqueness.  And my heart chakra, my need for love, for interaction, relationship, in the ways I need, the kind of love I need, not just this totally selfless love, but an interactive love that meets the needs of my personality and passions and preferences and a really compatible kind of fulfilling love.  And sexuality, to need to have that part of my identity fulfilled in a way that is healthy and loving for me, when the world seems to not have the kind of romantic relationship I would need that I can see, but only much misleading, much use and abuse and much mistaken feeling of love which leads to wrongness, hurt and use and abandonment.  Finding my romantic and sexual needs met safely and happily only by spirit and astral love, because all human love in that way feels extremely using and hurtful and unpleasant, totally not enjoyable to me at all, the opposite of that, disgusting.  So I’m totally traumatized in that way after all I’ve seen and learned of people and relationships, but I still have to be a wife to my husband and his expectations, demands, and anyway, ..  the world doesn’t have what I need, but only seems to want to use and twist me into something I can’t be, am not, choke the very life out of me, and then throw me away.  Or to throw me away before all the abuse, for the less damaging ones.  But throw me away, either with living decay, thrown away, desecrated, a living death, though not literally thrown away or actual literal abandonment.  

[paganchristian]

A squirrel eating a camellia, which we saw at a botanical garden, with a glowing eye (we didn’t see it with glowing eyes, neither our glowing eyes, nor its, well, in a metaphorical sense, maybe eyes all aglow, wow, it’s a squirrel eating a flower,... I think this may have been the first time I discovered squirrels eat flowers,...  but it has glowing eyes in the picture, the squirrel with glowing eyes... All this makes me think of the song, ‘The Lamb With Radar Eyes’, by Tangerine Dream,...  I listened and it’s the one that introduced me to the wonderful peacock call and made me identify it from a distance, echoing all the many acres of the zoo we were at, then discovered, that is the sound from the song, and oh, there is the animal that makes that sound, a peacock!).  Ah, well, anyway...

[paganchristian]

For cheerful colors I really like metallic bluish green turquoise teal whatever this might be called, what is the best color descriptor for this color?  Anyway, these dragonflies, so beautiful, tiny and thin.  I think that I’ve seen them in other colors, maybe was it a sapphire blue metallic and maybe a deep indigo violet purplish plummy blackish something or other color.  Was there others, maybe yellow and red?  Or is my imagination making a confabulated dream of the bits and pieces of misremembered things?  What difference does it make.  They’d be pretty if they existed and maybe somewhere they might, in all these colors.  Dwellers of swamps.  And of tiny woodland brooks.  Are these dragonflies or technically damselflies?  Are there something called maidenflies?  What about ladybugs Why are there no manbugs?  Lol  Are there some masculine equivalent of such things?  Well anyway with my daughter we’ve read so many things about so many different animals and she has learned so many facts, of course gradually to be forgotten because so goes memory unless you often review it but once she was watching all these videos about animals till I realized that her adhd was quite worsened by tv and now I extremely limit her screen time.  But animal facts are amazing.  It’s really like stranger than fiction, living in a fairytale often when you learn some of what is real in nature.  And it’s so full of insightful symbolic lessons and possibilities and creative solutions.  Ah, I just want to dissolve in nature a while and come back anew, cleansed and fresh and free. Having solved problems without ever head-on articulating them, avoiding the froth of exhausting and corrosive feelings and fears and shames a nd angers but just let them filter though half-consciously, embedded in dreams and beautiful images which contain and buffer out the horror of it all while letting me process it safely, slowly, with love and hope and all that too.  So I see how walks in nature or on the beach are so therapeutic.  Somehow from all the imagery and from the patterns and the the five (and more) senses of it all,... From all that, symbols and ideas arise in my mind and heart, and problems work themselves out in my mind, maybe below conscious awareness.  Something about moonlight and the tides, too, on the beach, it feels like it pulls me out of myself into a new rhythmic harmonious soothing and healing thing.  It is beyond any logical explanation and beyond any expectation or belief, how it happened to me.  We used to live by the beach and walk there every night and I was just amazed by the effect of the moonlit tides on my mind, mood, and intuitive self and insights.  Not a cure all.  Still I needed spirit, and I needed divination, and I needed my daughter, and sprit loves, and I needed this and that, and still I was mired in this awful delusional state were my own horrifying weaknesses and wrongs were entrenched and I couldn’t see they were wrong, and I couldn’t move out of them, and so I needed to be loved for my very weaknesses and wrongs themselves, and so spirit did, and while I aimed over and over over time for improving and changing and I thought amazing things would happen for me, and I kept on thinking it was always today, tomorrow, just around the corner, my whole life would be shot into the sky of perfect wonder and it never happened but over years I kept thinking it was always, literally like tomorrow, and how did spirit keep deceiving me that way?  But were it not for that hope and strong, joyful, excited, energized conviction, I don't’ know if I ever would have gotten as far as I did,... I don’t know if I would have made it through the day, day after day, after years and years, ...  because what else was there to live for when my literal real life right before me was full of rotting waste and horror?  Then eventually things did begin to improve and some of the amazing dreams I ‘d had did start to materialized and I feel like that I attracted it to myself, through energy, through love, through hope and positivity and creativity and ideas, but also through the energy itself, like they say in new age beliefs, you attract the energy you emit, ...  my energy of always believing it was just around the corner.  Some of those high hopes might never ever happen for me in this life but some, many already now have, many years, almost a decade later now.  

[paganchristian]

Another flower which cheers me up.  If I could only sit there, but in my memory I sit here, in this grove of sweetshrub, poisonous deliciously strawberry spicy scented, carried by Victorian ladies throughout the day so they could smell it,...  Mmm... I really like the appearance too, and they grow wild through places in Florida and I don’t know where else.  Ah, it’s called Carolina allspice, too, I just looked up, so maybe it grows in the Carolinas too?  Mountains?  Yellow is thought of as a cheery color, usually, and pink and other bright warm colors but to me, other colors are often very uplifting and energizing, like this almost blood red color.  What is it about it?  But often the color of blood is thought to be the color of life, energy, strength, among other things.  Of course, it can be shamed and maligned too, the color of sin, suffering, killing, and whatever else. The color of compassion, according to Tibetan Buddhism, the color of some of their robes.  I think, because it is the color of blood, of suffering and suffering with.  Maybe because I was immersed in Tibetan Buddhism and also goth, hahaha things at various times in my life, and just imagery, symbolism which I dove into and blood red is quite a symbolic thing,...  Maybe because of that, I can relate to this color.  Then Kali of course, well, as well as various cultures through the worlds (I almost said through the year, was talking to my daughter while typing and la de da who knows but I wanted to note in case it sparks more thoughts later)...  Other cultures often seem to use red to spark a feeling of joy, and enthusiasm, and vitality and it’s commonly thought of as being a happy and lively color so yeah.  I associate it with the Kalbeliya tribal people of India, and how I was once a little bit mesmerized and enamored of them.  But I’m not sure if they use a lot of red, and the memories I’m having of them at the moment are of other colors.  Anyway, for whatever reason they bring to my mind the color red though, and I think it’s used as an accent at least, not that I’m any sort of expert on them of course, I’ve just watched some documentaries, videos, read about them some.  Anyway, red can be used to great effect with a variety of other colors.  Of course, it’s often seems to be used in Chinese culture, symbolically, and maybe other Eastern Asian cultures too , some of them, I think.  Sometimes or often, I’ve seen it combined with pink, which I love, Hello Kitty, makes me think of, which my daughter loved and still loves,.. Valentine’s day also,...  and it makes me think of the time when I began to notice warm, bright and fiery types of colors more, red, orange and pink and maybe also red-violet and maroon and yellow, or purple, but overall a very fiery effect.  Paired together these colors really make me happy sometimes.  So I had never seen them so much or noticed them thus till one day I got this bracelet at the dollar store with many layers of seedbeds in all these colors together.  I think it was in style to mix such colors at the time, because I started noticing it more here and there.  I was a teenager then and since then I have never felt the same about such colors, and love them, especially when it’s overpowered mostly with bright red, watermelon, pink, and orange.  Other colors mixed in moderation but those especially I love together.   So maybe these rambling thoughts will help me spark something new out of my feeling of frozen stagnated rotten moldering trapped putrefaction. 

[paganchristian]

This is a St. John’s wort flower, I think, from a botanical garden.  If it’s not the actual St. John’s wort, it’s a hypercium, same species or is it genus?  Whatever, anyway, a variation of the same kind of plant.  It is cheering me up at this particular moment so I’ll post it just because.  St. John’s wort is supposed to be  a remedy for depression that is effective for some people.  I’ve never tried it, and think it’s supposed to  be more effective for milder depression, usually.  I read of some people having an opposite effect and it made them feel more down that usual.  But so it often can be with herbal and natural remedies.  What works for one will not work for all. I guess it’s the same for many conventional medicines too, and some don’t respond well to the most common treatments for different conditions.  Which makes me think of different thoughts, for whatever it’s worth to note for my future thoughts in case it is worth something then or just to imprint the idea a bit more firmly upon my memory, not that I think it’s really that important but this is how writing works for me.  Stream of consciousness, not knowing how important it will be or where it will go and out of all that wandering something really transformational happens over time like magic.